Tom Steyer vs. Koch brothers cage fight

Steyer is looking to compete against the established Koch operation. | AP Photos

Steyer has built his own smaller network of nonprofits and political committees to advance his causes. Most prominent among those is his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, the group through which Steyer spent $8 million last year to help Democrat Terry McAuliffe become Virginia’s governor.

Other groups in Steyer’s orbit include Advanced Energy Economy, a group of business leaders that promotes clean energy technology, which he co-founded; and Next Generation, a think tank that he co-founded with his brother James and former Kaiser Family Foundation executive Matt James. The group focuses on climate and energy issues and childhood education.

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Steyer also sits on the board of One PacificCoast Bank, a community development bank supporting low-income communities on the West Coast that is headed by his wife, Kat Taylor. And he co-chairs, along with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former George W. Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Risky Business initiative, which seeks to quantify the economic effects of climate change.

Because it’s a super PAC, NextGen Climate Action must disclose its donors. But other Steyer-tied groups like AEE and Next Generation do not.

While Steyer largely self-funded last year’s success in Virginia, he has since begun seeking to persuade like-minded donors to join his cause. In November, he pitched his plans to the Democracy Alliance, a club of major liberal donors, and earlier this month he invited deep-pocketed liberals to his Pescadero, Calif., ranch for more strategy talks.

Steyer has pledged to spend $50 million of his own money, which he hopes to match with $50 million from contributors, to sway key races in the midterm elections and set the stage for 2016. His aides said the $100 million figure, first reported by The New York Times, could go even higher if necessary.

Both sides have bristled at comparisons between Steyer, who made his fortune as a hedge fund executive, and the Kochs, whose network of businesses includes petroleum refining, ranching, paper products, minerals and fertilizers.

“That’s like comparing Harry Potter to Voldemort,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco-based climate donor who co-hosted a Democratic fundraiser Wednesday night at Steyer’s San Francisco home. “Tom’s operation is transparent and set up for the common good. The Koch brothers are fueled by greed and a desire to advance their Big Oil agenda.”

Steyer went even further in a recent interview with Men’s Journal, saying David Koch is “taking the most incredible risk that I’ve ever seen someone take, of going down in history as just an evil – just a famously evil — person.”

A spokesman for the Kochs declined to comment. But conservative allies reject the notion that Steyer is a noble green-energy crusade while the Koch brothers are sinister big spenders.

“We’re the last people to say that [Steyer] doesn’t have the right to do any of this,” Thomas Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries who now heads the Koch-linked nonprofit Institute for Energy Research. “But it is not unnoticed that there’s a lot of hypocrisy in the Democratic ranks about this notion that people are trying to buy the process.”

Pyle added that he sees “a significant amount of self-serving” in Steyer’s effort. “In his desire to create a pool of investors in his issues, he’s going after folks who are seeking to profit handsomely off the destruction of these energy jobs in the coal, natural gas and oil sectors,” he said.

Steyer’s aides have aggressively rejected conservatives’ accusations that he has a financial stake in promoting renewable energy and tackling climate change.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) suggested last year that Steyer may have a financial reason for opposing the Keystone pipeline, saying the billionaire’s former hedge fund, Farallon Capital, invested in the rival pipeline company Kinder Morgan. Steyer responded by promising to donate any personal profits from Kinder Morgan investments — which he estimated at between $1 million and $2 million — to help the victims of Western wildfires in the U.S.